Why do the Chinese sell us low-quality, crappy products?

Dear George,

Well, you are in good company and by that I mean millions of other consumers around the world share your frustration and anger about the quality of Chinese products.

This is not a problem unique to Tanzania, or even Africa, but it’s endemic throughout much of the developing world.

Here in Vietnam, where I live, people feel exactly the same way towards 'Made in China' than you do. Now I realize this doesn’t really change anything but it might be important to know that you’re definitely not alone.Here’s the problem: so long as there is a demand for 'stuff,' and I mean anything from CDs to toys to those crappy shoes you bought, there is always going to be someone who’s willing to sell it and this is where it gets tricky.

The Chinese are indeed the world’s factory. They make pretty much everything, including much of those low-quality and fake products that end up in the markets in Kampala. That doesn’t mean, though, that they are entirely responsible.If you go to the giant trading cities in Southern China, like Guangzhou and Shenzhen, you’ll find countless African traders there buying up everything the Chinese can make, counterfeits and otherwise, packing it in to giant container boxes and shipping them straight back home to sell to consumers like you.

My point here is not to somehow defend the Chinese, they do indeed bear some of the responsibility, but not all.

The supply chain of those crappy products is filled with lots of middlemen from around the world who are equally complicit.

This is why it’s too easy to lay all of the blame for those fake goods at the feet of the Chinese when there are Tanzanian and other African business people who bought those goods from the Chinese factories, brought them into the country, distributed them to the store that you went to and then pocket most of the profits.The real villain here, though, is poverty. While the Chinese are among the world’s leading manufacturers of fake pharmaceuticals (how evil!), fake Nikes, fake iPhones and so on, they are also the world’s leading producer of real pharmaceuticals, real Nikes, real iPhones, etc…

So how can that be? Well, they sell the good stuff to rich people and fake/low-quality goods to poor people. It’s that simple. Really.If you walk into a Target or a Wal-Mart store in the United States, pretty much everything is made in China. The products there may not be the greatest quality but none of it is fake.

Cross the street and walk over to the Apple store and there you’ll find everything is also made in China but it’s excellent quality. So the fact that goods are made in China is no indicator of a product’s quality.The quality of Chinese products available in any given market really depends on how affluent the consumers are in that country are.

Until consumers in the stores that you go to in Kampala are willing to pay $900 for an iPhone, then they will have to settle for the fake $50 dollar version which, as you know all too well, is a joke.I’m afraid that you’re stuck with those low-end Chinese products until Tanzania is able to move up the economic ranks and attract those higher-quality products that consumers in developed markets enjoy everyday.

The next time you’re in a store and see what’s clearly a fake Chinese good, well you’re right to curse the Chinese for making it but also remember that a lot of your own countrymen are equally complicit for helping to bring that product to your market — Eric

Eric Olander and Cobus van Staden are the duo behind the and hosts of the popular  They’re here to answer your most pressing, puzzling, even politically incorrect questions about all things related to the Chinese in Africa and Africans in China. If you want to know something, anything at all… just hit them up online and they’ll give it to you straight:

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